Photo Gallery

What's In It For You

Swoop in and connect with others. Sit, sprawl, lie down. Throw your leg over a chair arm while you work, talk, or just relax. Traditional lounge furniture inhibits movement. Swoop encourages it. A modular system that lets you position a table or ottoman here or there, wherever it works best at the moment, Swoop takes the edge off lounge furniture.

Sit the Way You Sit

Swoop encourages movement. The sweeping curves of the modular components accommodate all kinds of sitting styles—in offices, public spaces, college common areas. Formal, casual, in-between.

Swoop was designed on the basis of this idea: The way you sit is part of who you are. It's personal. Upright, legs crossed, reading a magazine. Feet up, laptop at the ready. Scrunched down a bit, with coffee. Swoop delivers flexible comfort to spaces where people connect.

Connects You to Technology and to Others

One of our goals in designing Swoop was to make connecting you to technology and to other people as comfortable as possible. That's why so many configuration options are built in.

Freestanding tables can work as stools and as desks. You can even slide a table surface over a chair armrest. Pieces can be ganged or left freestanding. Make a sofa out of a run of chairs, or break up the seating bench with same-height tables. Choose a table that has power outlets built in for easy connectivity.

But they're more than just pieces of good-looking furniture. They work together in countless different ways. With the same number of Swoop components, you can create entirely different spaces. The pieces are modular and lightweight, you can move them around with ease.

Versatile, Suitable

In today's world, versatility is essential because nothing stays the same for long. Swoop suits your style with an extensive range of fabrics, upholstery, veneers, laminates, and colors to suit environments ranging from classic to expressive.

It's the perfect soft seating solution for the private offices, higher education facilities, libraries, and lobbies of today and tomorrow.

Design Story

People have been sitting on Brian Kane designs for years. Kids and grownups sit in his very cool rubber chairs; they're part of the San Francisco MoMA permanent collection. And he's widely known as a designer of public pieces; his comfortable benches and graceful bike racks pop up on sidewalks in New York and San Francisco. In these objects, as in all his designs, Kane strives for what he calls "craft through technology. I have always attempted to explore existing materials and processes and use them in new ways that add an element of detail or craft that is unique."

When we asked him to design lounge furniture for us, Kane says he didn't want to create just another lounge chair. Instead, "I wanted to create a versatile and fluid lounge seating and table solution that allows people the freedom to move and create spaces that suit their needs." So he approached the task with a single basic idea: "With traditional lounge seating, people are locked into it," he says. "Swoop provides freedom to move around."

But move around how?

Kane teaches at the California College of Art, a perfect place to observe how students interact with furniture. "It was an important observation," he says, "because those who are in higher education now will be the workers of tomorrow."

Kane noticed that students today "don't really sit in a chair. They sprawl. They lie. They perch. With their MP3 players and computers, they can be totally tuned out in a busy environment as long as they're comfortable. I tried to respond to that form-wise, with 'swooping' curves that people can throw their arms or legs over and still be comfortable and well-supported."

Kane was first introduced to the world of industrial design by a high school guidance counselor. "He pointed at his office chair, his phone, the clock, and said, 'These were all designed by somebody.'" recalls Kane.

After graduating from the University of Bridgeport in Connecticut, he spent a year in New York designing appliances. Then he and his wife headed for Milan, Italy, where he literally knocked on doors. One opened—the door of architect Silvio Coppola—and it changed his life. "Seeing his passion for design was a real head-turner for me," says Kane, who decided that designing furniture was what he wanted to do.

In 1989 Kane established Kane Design Studio, where he continues to focus on what he loves most of all: seating. "It's all about comfort and innovation," he says. His designs have won more than 80 awards and have been exhibited at numerous museums, but he says he is especially proud to now have his designs sitting alongside those of Charles Eames and George Nelson in Herman Miller showrooms. "For me, that's as good as it gets."